


paper wasps

by evil_bunny_king



Series: Of the Sun [13]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abora Lavellan, F/M, Fade Kiss, Gen, Trespasser DLC spoilers, Vignette Collection, balcony kiss, final kisses, post-haven
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 13:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4669064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story told in remembered moments. Non-chronological vignettes.</p><p>1. He never traces her vallaslin.<br/>2. Balcony kiss. A resolution.<br/>3. Lavellan questions her impulsivity.<br/>4. The breath before the plunge - and what a glorious plunge it is.<br/>5. Beautiful and wondrous things.<br/>6. After the fall. An unsent letter.<br/>7. It is in the slope of Solas’ jaw that she still sees him.<br/>8. He's forged her from the fires of a fallen sun.<br/>9. Cole delivers a gift.<br/>10. Fen'harel wakes. A study of absence.<br/>11. Lavellan's first solitary watch goes about as well as can be expected.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. run deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He never traces her vallaslin. (Pre-break-up)

She has a scar that runs through her bottom lip and curves to her cheek.

He feels it when he kisses her: a note of tension at the corner of her mouth, an edge that tugs around her lips when she speaks, when she smiles. It's rough, under his fingertips; deep, where it slants through her vallaslin, and when he traces it she turns into the touch, flicking her gaze from his eyes to his mouth, and then back.

"What does it mean to you?" she asks. The words wisp across his palm. She does not mean the scar.

He lifts his hand to brush her hair behind her ear, letting the golden strands smooth over his fingers.

"That you have been through much, and yet survive," he responds, and there is - comfort, in giving that truth. As masked as it is. As frightening as it is.

She hums bemusedly and nips at his wrist: sharp teeth, and that crooked smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another gift, another Lavellan - this time the dear [Momo](http://where-willows-wail.tumblr.com/post/141020910099/shes-not-a-mage-but-her-cosplay-is-really-good). :'3 (if she asks you never saw this)


	2. a resolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Balcony: part 1

The afternoon is waning. The voices in the libraries dim, silence settling until he can almost hear the creak of the bird cages above but when Solas turns away from his side-table, abandoning his notes in the face of his distraction, it is to find the source of it before him.

The Inquisitor stands in his doorway, anchored hand lingering on the frame.

When their gazes meet her jaw firms. Her pointed chin rises, something like resolution burning in her eyes and Lavellan straightens herself and steps into the room, purpose broadening her stride.

“Inquisitor.” Her title feels odd in his mouth. “I was…”

Just about to look for you, he almost says. Was wanting to speak with you, to clarify, to seize and grasp at this thing that stirs between us, even now, with each deliberate step taken into the room.

She is so quiet, when she walks. It’s an odd thing to notice, especially now, but - she’s so surefooted, as if it’s an easy grace, but he’s seen her when she falters, seen her pour the steel back into her spine. She uses precision as an armour when other masks fall short.

Is that what their dance seems to her, then? he wonders. A battle of attrition? Affection outstretched and worn by its reach, by distances too far for her to fathom?

He takes a breath. It is strained, by recent grief and the deep-set ache of the old, and it comes as a sigh, like the magics that brought Wisdom to peace. And yet she approaches, and she waits for him to speak. Patiently: that rarity that she reserves for him.

He takes another breath.

“Do you have a moment?”


	3. Benediction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Balcony kiss: the breath before the plunge. And what a glorious plunge it is.

She catches him.

The tug of her hand is warm against the chill mountain air, insistent, firm – and when she speaks her words are simple, honest in a way she rarely offers.

“Don’t go. Please.”

She’s making a choice, he realises.

He remembers Crestwood. The fluctuation of distances: the sidelong glances and quick smiles - he’d been glad of her indecision, then; glad she’d taken heed of his warnings. Although not happy, he’d been – relieved. He would burden her no further and with that he could be content, he’d told himself. As much as his dreams reached after her. As much as something inside him soothed the moments she chose to draw near.

She no longer hesitates now.

Caution had only brought more pain, added more senseless deaths to the mound of those that had preceded them and her hand is warm in the crook of his elbow.

A choice. Her choice, one with a weight that is heavy in the thin air.

If she takes him now, she accepts all that she knows of him. If she takes him now, then she accepts the little he has to offer – but – maybe (he takes the breath and it shakes) - he could give her that which she herself has pieced back together. The man that he has rediscovered in her company:  _Solas_ , beneath the title and the legacy, and he is weighed by the countless mistakes that have brought them to this point, yes, burdened and false but he is - hers, for all that it matters. He is hers, for without her, surely, he would…

She’s made her choice, and now she asks for his in turn - hand outstretched, reaching.

She chooses and so he does as well.

He turns and sweeps her close, losing himself in her laughing breath, her calloused hands, the demanding heat of that stubborn, smiling mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still trying to figure out my canon for this scene. There are two versions of this particular drabble, actually - which took me ages and then I couldn't decide which I liked better. This one, although wordy, has a lovely flow to it hence my decision... The other one is on my tumblr. <3


	4. beautiful and wondrous things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Balcony kiss.

And then she is in his arms- warm, and alive, and he sinks into the tenderness of her lips,.

The truth is an easy thing, after that.

“Ar lath ma, vhenan.”

He loves. With all that remains of his foolish, broken soul, he loves.

He can’t. He shouldn’t. This is wrong, he tells himself, but he no longer believes it – _she is not an echo_ \- and when he pulls himself away he cannot deny the reluctance that weighs each distance he places between them.

He needs space to think. His task remains unchanged. His intentions, his mistakes - the price remains to be paid and they will both regret this, he suspects; despite the comfort they’ve found in each other, despite the brief moments they share.

But as he walks away, leaves her on the balcony with the memory of her still warm in his arms - his heart feels lighter than it has for millennia.

He loves. Once again, he loves.

And as Wisdom counselled, it is indeed a beautiful and wondrous thing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unsent letter. Solas POV.

These are the things I want to remember.

Not the grove. Not the hilltop. Not the way your voice cracked, whispering through bloodied lips, begging me to stay.

Just this.

Your smile, pressed against mine. Your laugh, heavy with the evening, humming through blankets and lazy limbs and curling against my cheek.

Simple moments. Infinities.

I don’t want to forget.

 


	6. Islands/Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trespasser DLC spoilers.

It is in the slope of Solas’ jaw that she still sees it. In the curve of his neck, as he had curved over his desk in the rotunda - beneath the fur mantle, the armoured plate that flows impossibly at the joints - before the shadows that gather now beneath his eyes, there are - there were -

Moments in warm silence and the flicker of wisp light; kisses pressed to that very hollow behind his ear-

The taste-scent of plaster and paint, flour and nutmeg; fingertips soothed with elfroot and sun-touched books and heat and him and-

It only lasts a moment. Caught in the juncture of plate and skin as he kneels before her and condemns her even as he relieves her of the burden she’d never wanted, that was the only thing she had that could’ve stopped him (even if it would claim her first).

But then he rolls back on his heels. He leaves new scars with the soft, restrained kiss he places on her lips, and he rises, his collar sliding back into place - and those glimpses slide away with it, fading away like the islands of the crossroads.

He straightens and tells her he will remember her as he leaves.

She reaches after him but she can’t seem to reach, anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one- was inspired by the wonderful [arlavellan's Trespasser screenshots](http://evilbunnyking.tumblr.com/post/132859056290/arlavellan-tell-me-did-you-want-to-walk-away). :''') It was written to accompany it. Wallow in solavellan hell with me.


	7. Virtute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corypheus is defeated, and Solas is gone - but some things yet linger. Pre-Trespasser, Solas x Lavellan

“I don’t want it.”

She curls Cole’s fingers closed and pushes them away, pushes him back, that sad little smile on her lips. He frowns.

“You need it, though.”

Her laugh is simple, if a little choked. “No. I don’t.”

 _I don’t understand._ But he doesn’t say the words out loud, they’re - stilted, fragmented, too easily lost in the mire of others that press into his mind and he almost loses her, for a second, if not for the weight of her hands over his.

She is looking him in the eye now. She ducks her head to peer at him beneath the rim of his hat, her grip on his hands tightening. “Cole. Are you…”

_alright she wants to ask but this is who he is now, who she made him to be – it was better, she’d thought, but this- was it really- is this really-_

“It is better,” he finishes for her, back again, necklace still in his hands.

She jolts. She always does when he hears her too clearly.

He wants to try again. She needs this. She’s saying it, just not in words that she knows and so-

“Please, take this,” he asks, pressing the necklace into her fingers, and pressing through the veil before she can refuse again.

He finds himself on battlements. They had talked here once - they are talking here, they will always be talking here- before the world was made less real – mended, it was mended – and before their friend was gone, losing himself in wildernesses of his own creation.

Lavellan stands below and stares at the jawbone in her hands – the shattered pieces of it, wrapped back together in twine he’d found in the kitchens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written as a flash fiction. This is the cleaned up version - but it was a weird one anyway and still feels rough. Ah well.


	8. Of the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Trespasser. Inspired by this [wonderful photoset.](http://arlavellan.tumblr.com/post/132446388976/i-am-no-ones-agent-but-my-own) (Take a look before reading)

There’s a mulish set to Solas' lips. The hollows are pressed wide about his eyes, shadows that deepen when set against the sunlight, but it’s the press of his lips - the sad, frustrated line of his mouth, drawn at the corners, that tells her that maybe, finally, this will be an end.

He gazes at her from before the Eluvian: head tilted, stance steady, masked by the armor and furs he hides himself behind.

She balances on the balls of her feet and hefts her dagger in her good hand.

There had been a man she’d known there, once. A man with the warmth of a fallen sun on his tongue, who'd pressed starlight into her flesh.

She looks at him and still feels the burns. She looks at what he’s always been.

A muscle in his jaw ticks.

She readies herself. She draws the stump of her arm close, tightening the useless straps of her false limb, and waits for his mulish mouth to tighten and take the last shreds of the man she thought she knew away with it.

He turns, instead, and stalks silently through the open portal, disappearing through it before her enraged scream can finish leaving her lips.

Her dagger clatters fruitlessly against the polished gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be a warm up and grew beyond itself. It was also originally posted as the second chapter of another drabble I have, but it fits better here.
> 
> Title taken from the beautiful [ 'Before I Sleep'](https://soundcloud.com/marika-hackman/before-i-sleep?in=marika-hackman/sets/we-slept-at-last) by Marika Hackman - words (still) cannot express how much I love this artist. This song in particular is one of my main solavellan tunes. <3


	9. Quiet Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glance back at the beginning.

he sleeps.

he sleeps for a very, very long time.

To wake is to resurface: lungs straining, a gasp upon his lips, fingers clawing up towards air and peeling back the waves and when he wrenches himself free he is confronted by _silence_. The shadows of his grotto close upon his skin, the old magics of  _Tarasyl'an Te'las_  straining, stretching. There is an absence that reaches him, even here, in the hinges of the trap that he'd snapped shut.

It seeps into him, layering into his breath. It nestles into each brittle curve of his bones.

 

..

 

when he pulls himself through the burnished glass of the eluvian, his nails chip on the corroded rim.

he grasps the frame with shaking hands, using it to keep himself upright, limbs still trembling and stares out into a shattered reflection of the worlds in-between- the heart-blood of his people, fallen to ruin while he'd slept.

Destroyed amphitheaters scatter the realities. Roads of once-sustained chaos winding into nothing- long broken, and forgotten, and drifting into aimless fog

Islands stir in the void.

He watches as they drift through the silence. As their edges fall up, crumbling into formless sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finding it difficult to find inspiration at the moment, bah. Have a rumination in the meanwhile.


	10. Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another beginning. Early game, before the destruction of Haven.

“Wandering, wandering, buzzing behind paper skin. Their words wouldn’t stick, the ink wasn’t right.”

Nuven started, turning to face the human that crouched on the far edge of her log. Nail-bitten fingers tugged at worn coat sleeves. Worried at loose threads.

_Cole._

He hadn’t been there before – or maybe he had, cloaked in that strange power of his, watching the embers of the campfire crackle into darkness beside her.

He stared at them now, the worn brim of his hat drawn low over his forehead, shadows sunk into the hollows of his eyes.

“But it was right for  _her._ Second self as sharp as a blade and just as bare, lips that split and spoke of  _freedom_.”

Her own lips fell open at the words, pain twisting afresh in her chest.  _Revas. He meant Revas._  “Cole-”

“I’m sorry she died.”

She pulled her knees to her chest, gazing after the floating sparks.

There had been no chance to mourn. With the chaos of the war and the rifts, she hadn’t had the time to try and find her sister’s body in the temple ruins, recite a eulogy over the rubble. She doubted any but Leliana knew that she hadn’t been alone when she’d been sent to the Conclave.

Acknowledgement was something. It was difficult to remember alone- almost as if Revas never existed, was only real in the vagaries of her memory.

“Ash in mouth, choking like guilt. Ghost lights in ribbed cages- she should be the one here, she’d do better, be better.”

“Yes.” Her voice was a rasp against her throat, unintended. Honest. The boy looked at her and frowned.

“You’re wrong, though. She isn’t here, so you can’t know that. You’re here.”

She allowed herself a short laugh, blinking away tears. “Yes, Cole. I am.”

His frown deepened. “It’s not your fault she died,” he insisted. “She would’ve come either way - ‘can’t trust you to not to talk yourself into trouble, lethallan-’”

“Cole.” She cut him off before he could drive the knife deeper, tearing her eyes away from the flames. Forced her head up. Forced a smile.  _Regain control_. “Please. Stop.”

He peered into her face, distress clear. “I’m not helping. Sorry. Let me-”

“Don’t, Cole. Please.”

He fixed her with that dewed gaze, blue-eyes wide. Looked into hers.

“…Alright.”

He got to his feet, disappearing in a rustle of cloth.

She returned to the campfire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is actually a gift - Nuven Lavellan is a DOLL and wonderful and belongs to the amazing mastcells.
> 
> Eventually/SOON I will write more with her <3 It fits with the rest of these quite nicely, though.


End file.
